Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I am not an educator, but I took plenty of advanced and honors classes in Jr. High and High School. I think it would be a nightmare for the teacher to have to keep up with two different sets of cirriculum for one class. We always had honors courses. Our curriculum was always completely different from the curriculum of the other regular classes. For instance in English, rather than focusing more on grammar, we got into more literature and analysis of that literature. We had more reports and papers, but less of the technical stuff. For choir our "concert choir" was the honors class. We each had to audition to make it and we worked on completely different material than the chorale. We did most of the competition performances for state, and the honor choirs we could individually audition for in the state. At one school I went to the honors courses were weighted differently, but at the school I ended up graduating from they were weighted the same, and we had the opportunity to take the A/P tests for the subjects.
That really is too bad, your son sounds very talented and it seems as if his foreign language skills aren't being challenged or expanded. As a foreign language teacher, that really irks me
My son is very very smart but he doesn't really like Spanish all that much. It's not hard for him he says it's just boring. Spanish 3 is offered at an honors level. Let's see if he likes it better than the first 2 years.
An interesting side note-My middle son started his high school Spanish classes in 7th grade with only honors students. He has taken the same tests and had the same projects as his older brother (they are in 8th/10th) and has liked his foreign language class MUCH better than the older one. I wonder if it is because he is in an honors class AND he is 2 years younger so the class is more challenging for him. He also has an A but does not complain that the class is boring.
Let's see if they learned anything useful when we go to Mexico next week.
I am not an educator, but I took plenty of advanced and honors classes in Jr. High and High School. I think it would be a nightmare for the teacher to have to keep up with two different sets of cirriculum for one class. We always had honors courses. Our curriculum was always completely different from the curriculum of the other regular classes. For instance in English, rather than focusing more on grammar, we got into more literature and analysis of that literature. We had more reports and papers, but less of the technical stuff. For choir our "concert choir" was the honors class. We each had to audition to make it and we worked on completely different material than the chorale. We did most of the competition performances for state, and the honor choirs we could individually audition for in the state. At one school I went to the honors courses were weighted differently, but at the school I ended up graduating from they were weighted the same, and we had the opportunity to take the A/P tests for the subjects.
Great input, osugirl2. Honors provides the augmentation needed for gifted and other kids who need the challenge at middle & high school levels.
For those of us in early elementary, we provided differentiated instruction for our struggling as well as our gifted students. Imagine a continuum of delivery in the regular classroom.
I have certification in gifted, but have chosen not to go into the gifted program since those teachers are itinerant. We have an itinerant gifted instructor who provides a couple of hours of supplemental instruction to our gifted students every other week, thus pretty limited.
We also have a highly gifted program into which students K-6 must test with the philosophical stance & qualifications outlined here:
My son is very very smart but he doesn't really like Spanish all that much. It's not hard for him he says it's just boring. Spanish 3 is offered at an honors level. Let's see if he likes it better than the first 2 years.
An interesting side note-My middle son started his high school Spanish classes in 7th grade with only honors students. He has taken the same tests and had the same projects as his older brother (they are in 8th/10th) and has liked his foreign language class MUCH better than the older one. I wonder if it is because he is in an honors class AND he is 2 years younger so the class is more challenging for him. He also has an A but does not complain that the class is boring.
Let's see if they learned anything useful when we go to Mexico next week.
Wow, talk about being on the same wave length! I was actually going to suggest a language school for your eldest, in order to challenge and perhaps enthuse him. I definitely think that he doesn't like language b/c he is not in a challenging class. How much would you enjoy an English class in which you were reading about Dick, Jane and their dog, Spot?
Oh, and bon voyage! (linguist humor ).
hmm, just give the smart kid more or harder work. Lets not find a way to differentiate instruction. Shame on your school system. My son is gifted in middle school, our school system offers a gifted middle school that you must apply into... but my son chose not to go. SO... he goes to our neighborhood middle with a gifted cluster program. The gifteds are clusted into a core group, but he is in a homogenous class.... and he is in all advanced classes with other high acheiving kids.
The instruction for a gifted should be differentiated to challenge their abilities. He gets information quickly, and has high conceptual abilities, and that is what is challenged. NOT just giving harder work or more work. challenging his conceptual abilities... looking for connections between things that most folks don't see, find ways to solve problems that aren't usually thought of at this point. That is gifted.
Please take some time to do some research into HOW to challenge a gifted child. All you are doing is peanlizing them for having these abiliities and teaching them to "hide" it....
OP, what you're describing is exactly why schools need honors classes for gifted students- if you're the only one expected to do extra work because you're smarter, it gets old really really fast. When everyone in the class is doing the same thing, there's less complaining because there's no special treatment- but this means that you need to have different levels of difficulty. The kids in the honors class do material quickly, the regular class moves at a slower pace, and no one is bored. It's unfair to expect a gifted kid to do more work in a regular class because they're gifted. If the kid really wants to be challenged, they'll take the honors version of the course. If they take the easy course, it's because they want to coast.
I was the kid who finished everything first. I would sit and read at my desk. I read about two books a week in the free time I had in class, and I was teased mercilessly for being a bookworm. I had one teacher in middle school who offered extra credit when she gave me extra work, but that backfired when I realized I had 138% in her class and I stopped doing homework.
My boyfriend was that kid when it came to math. In first grade, his teacher made him sit out in the hall and work out of the fifth grade math book. You can imagine how that affected his popularity and it bothered him that he had to do more work than the other kids.
These problems disappeared when we got to high school and were allowed to take honors classes and classes at local colleges. The students we were with moved at the same pace and we never had to do extra assignments out of boredom. Yes, truly gifted kids will learn on their own, but you severely underestimate the damage bullying can do to kids. Singling them out with extra assignments is not the way to go. Mentioning a book they might like is ok, but I'm guessing if they are in a regular class instead of an honors class, they don't want extra work.
OP, what you're describing is exactly why schools need honors classes for gifted students- if you're the only one expected to do extra work because you're smarter, it gets old really really fast. When everyone in the class is doing the same thing, there's less complaining because there's no special treatment- but this means that you need to have different levels of difficulty. The kids in the honors class do material quickly, the regular class moves at a slower pace, and no one is bored. It's unfair to expect a gifted kid to do more work in a regular class because they're gifted. If the kid really wants to be challenged, they'll take the honors version of the course. If they take the easy course, it's because they want to coast.
I was the kid who finished everything first. I would sit and read at my desk. I read about two books a week in the free time I had in class, and I was teased mercilessly for being a bookworm. I had one teacher in middle school who offered extra credit when she gave me extra work, but that backfired when I realized I had 138% in her class and I stopped doing homework.
My boyfriend was that kid when it came to math. In first grade, his teacher made him sit out in the hall and work out of the fifth grade math book. You can imagine how that affected his popularity and it bothered him that he had to do more work than the other kids.
These problems disappeared when we got to high school and were allowed to take honors classes and classes at local colleges. The students we were with moved at the same pace and we never had to do extra assignments out of boredom. Yes, truly gifted kids will learn on their own, but you severely underestimate the damage bullying can do to kids. Singling them out with extra assignments is not the way to go. Mentioning a book they might like is ok, but I'm guessing if they are in a regular class instead of an honors class, they don't want extra work.
So you're saying the gifted kids don't belong in my class. I can agree with that but there isn't another teacher to teach chemistry and physics so they're stuck with me. I'm not willing to teach honors classes because I think there is more need to teach a lower level chemistry class now that all students must pass chemistry to graduate. So, the question remains of how to handle gifted kids in the regular classroom becuase that is the situation we have to deal with.
Offer extra credit to everyone. The kids who breeze through the work will have some incentive, and the kids who struggle have a chance to bring up their grades. Why aren't you willing teach teach just one advanced class if it will help a group of students? Why do you feel their need for different stimulation isn't valid?
Offer extra credit to everyone. The kids who breeze through the work will have some incentive, and the kids who struggle have a chance to bring up their grades. Why aren't you willing teach teach just one advanced class if it will help a group of students? Why do you feel their need for different stimulation isn't valid?
Because I already teach three lab based preps. That's the equivalent of six preps when you consider lab preps. I'm not making it 4 lab based preps. Two is workable. Three is insane. I couldn't handle 4. I have to choose which three I'll teach. It's more important that I offer a lower level chemistry course than honors so that's what I teach.
I do offer extra credit but you have to have all assignments completed to do it. Many of my "gifted" kids have zeros on the books from assignments they didn't bother with so they don't do the extra credit too.
So you're saying the gifted kids don't belong in my class. I can agree with that but there isn't another teacher to teach chemistry and physics so they're stuck with me. I'm not willing to teach honors classes because I think there is more need to teach a lower level chemistry class now that all students must pass chemistry to graduate. So, the question remains of how to handle gifted kids in the regular classroom becuase that is the situation we have to deal with.
I am so glad my children attend a school where honors classes are valued by the administration and staff, where teachers enjoy their job and strive to challenge all children no matter how academically diverse their classrooms are, and where any teacher who said a student was "stuck" with her because she was not willing to teach an honors class (or any academic level) would be repremanded or even fired.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
).
